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Summers are just crawling with lots of awesome local vendor table opportunities.

People are out and about and you can really take advantage of the inexpensive, outdoor vendor tables at fairs, community festivals, art shows, wine festivals, carnivals and more!

I have been to more than my fair share of events over the last 10 years and I’m STUNNED at the vendor table set ups many times. It’s like people just decided that morning, “Hey! I think I will go set up a booth today!” They’re messy, overcrowded displays that honestly look like yard sale tables! Let’s talk about 3 important steps when it comes to planning for a booth event!

1. Design with Purpose:
When you are talking about your booth layout, you need to design with purpose.

How much space do you have?

What do you want to have happen in that space?

Do you want a U-shape where customer physically “enters” your booth space?

Or do you want to have one single table out front?

Chairs or no chairs?

How many people can be in/at your booth at one time?

Where will you take orders?

Where does the excess stock and the carrying tubs go?

You need to think this all through long before you are at the event. I have been so many vendor events before where I completely skip over a booth because how they have it set up does not work, it is not welcoming and it is just awkwardly set up. Draw it out in advance or better yet, set it up in advance in your basement or office so you can get a good look at it and what you are thinking, sometimes you just need to “try it on” and see if it fits, kinda like that outfit you thought was amazing until you actually tried it on in the dressing room. What you think looks good in your head doesn’t always look good once you try it, right? Take the time to make this right!

2. Decorate with Intention:
People are attracted to your vendor table by what they see when they first glance at the table. People will judge and decide whether they will approach your table in the first 3 seconds of seeing it. You need to really UP your decor game. Spend some time researching tablescapes because that is basically what you are building here.

Every inch of your tablescape (and your booth as a whole) needs to work together and be visually stimulating. Pick a theme for your table. For example, this summer you could do a Fun in the Sun theme and feature a large beach towel as your tablecloth, sand buckets to hold catalogs, etc. Think outside of the box, stroll down the summer aisle at the Dollar Store and get creative!

3. Dress for Success!
Anyone who knows me know that I am not a dress up girl! I like to be totally comfortable, you will never catch me at a vendor event in a dress or even in professional dress because it is not in my personality, but you will always find me dressed for success. I ALWAYS wear logowear like it is a uniform when I do my events. I want people to know what company I am with as soon as they see me, whether they are coming to my booth, or if they see me out and about at the event.

Just like people judge your table before they approach it, trust me, they are pre-judging you too. Fix your hair, put on a little make up and be ready to meet and greet everyone you see! And let’s be honest, it’s not just them judging us, we tend to pre-judge them to, we all do it!! Make sure you’re dressed for success and you’re approachable and smiling! It seems sad that I even have to write about this part, but like I said, I have been a part of many, many vendor events and I have seen more bedheads and just-slept-in-this outfits than I care to admit.

This blog post was inspired by a recent vendor event where the entire event felt very bland and boring, and I got the impression that the guests at the event felt the same way. People were just kinda wandering around, glancing at booths. I was the most popular booth at the event, which is great for me, but it made me sad to see so many guests just buzz by the other tables without really stopping.

BONUS TIP:

Have FOOD at your booth. Whether it’s a bowl of candy, cookies, popcorn, I don’t care. Have something that will attract people. And KIDS. How hard would it be to print out some coloring sheets and throw a box of crayons in a bowl for kiddos?

And don’t be boring. If you’re doing a theme (cause you should be), relate it to the theme. Do you want to be remembered for boring mints? Or do you want to be remembered for handing out Pop Rocks with a sticker that says “(insert business) ROCKS”. Your coloring sheets for the kids, relate it to your theme. Do something to stand out from the crowd. Crazy sells.

Next vendor event I have, I bringing a megaphone. And anyone who shouts “I love (insert business) gets $5 off their order that day. Why? Because it’s INSANE. And HILARIOUS. And the fun people will DO IT! And when they do, guess what? Everyone will turn around and LOOK at my booth to figure out what the fuss is all about. They’ll wonder why we’re over there having fun and laughing. And they’ll be next.

Have a great week everyone! What is YOUR favorite thing to do at a vendor event? Tell us below!

Need an idea to celebrate your new consultants?

I came up with an idea that will help celebrate them AND get them excited about their business! And I knew just who to contact to help me carry it out. Julie Shilling is my go to graphics girl. She efficient, affordable, and provides excellent service and design.

So here’s what I did…

When a new consultant enters their first party, I wanted a way to reward them with something that would also help them market their business. I decided to do a catalog label design!

So let’s say they enter their first party…

I message my girl this graphic and say pick any design you want! I’m going to personalize these catalog labels for you!

Julie provides a PDF they can download and print their own labels from home!

She charges the leader (me) $15 for the initial design with team colors or whatever you want on these 3 choices. But guess what? For every new consultant you need the design for, it only costs $5! So I can reward my new consultants for $5! HECK YEAH! #SCORE

This is going to:

help her market her business

make her feel so proud to see her name on a beautiful design

get her excited about passing out those catalogs

and make her job easy by handing her a tool that is essential to her business

I honestly hear from my Directly Social group members every single day asking for help on how to get people to engage with them in their Customer Groups.

Now, I’ve been focusing more on my business page than my customer group. So just know that these ideas apply to both.

Pay attention to what catches your eye and what stops your thumb scroll. What gets the coveted “reaction” from you, or better yet, what gets a comment or a share? Your group members are just like you, so once you figure out what gets interaction from you in other groups/page, you will better understand how to post things that get engagement in your own groups.

I will share some ideas of what gets great interaction for me in my customer group, which I discovered based on my own social media behaviors. Now, just because these work for me doesn’t mean they are the magic pill for you and your group, these are just ideas. You need to commit to doing the work and finding out what DOES work for your group.

1. Creating Polls:

Every time I create a poll in my customer group, I get fantastic interaction. Polls are great for waking the dead in the group too, it seems like people I haven’t “seen” in my group in months come out of the woodwork to participate in a poll!

Which room do you need to organize the most?

Living room

Kitchen

Bedroom

Here’s a video on how to create a poll in your customer group: CLICK HERE

2. Asking Questions:

If you want people to engage with you, ASK QUESTIONS! It gives them permission to respond, otherwise they just scroll on by! This is called a CTA or Call to Action. I never let a post leave my fingers without a CTA attached to it at the end of the post.

Post a picture of what you’re doing and ask…What is everyone doing this weekend?

That’s a CTA!

3. Posting Interactive Posts:

Some of my best engagement posts have been where I ask my group “Have you ever tried XYZ?” or “Have you ever heard of ABC?”. Sometimes it is specific to my product, but most of the time it is not. It is usually something “mom” related, or something that would be considered parallel content to my product line, so maybe something about organization, packing, etc. Everyone has an opinion they want to share about those interactive questions and I am always loving their comments!

Who has been to the Container Store?

Who has an IKEA near them?

How do you store your Tupperware containers? I need a new system!

Those are examples of interactive posts.

4. Rewarding for Interaction:

I wholly believe in rewarding what you want repeated, so I reward people who hop on live to my Facebook LIVES. I have GREAT interaction and attendance on my FB Lives in my group! It might be a discount for all of them, it might be a digital goodie, or maybe a free product drawing, it all depends on the LIVE video. They never know what I might giveaway or do, so they are sure to hop on as soon as they get the notification for fear of missing out on something awesome! #FOMO !

5. Games:

I love games and reward for them. You don’t have to give away the farm to do giveaways often. I just went to Party City last night and got a Minnie Mouse lunch box, adorable pen, and cup for $2.50 for the whole set. My customers get giddy about little cute collections like that. I scour the clearance bins there, Target, Dollar Tree.

I do a giveaway every Friday. They know it’s coming. When you get people participating, Facebook believes they WANT to see your posts and they show them more often.

Here’s an example of a fun game:

Click on this link and you’ll find a million of these Family Feud ones you can make:

I want to make my Customer Group and Facebook Business page a place where I personally want to come every day! I want to LOVE my own pages/groups! Here’s the deal, guys…. we are in the Customer EXPERIENCE and ENTERTAINMENT business, regardless of the product line we are selling! Think about it! People buy from people they know, like, and trust and I want to be that person for them. If they do not LIKE you, they will not BUY from you.

And did you notice anything about all the posts above?

NONE of them have anything to do with YOUR PRODUCT! Stop shoving sales and bookings down their throat with every single post. If your goal is community and interaction, you must focus on creating that environment. And salesy, spammy posts are not going to get it.

I am 100% committed to the experience, entertainment and engagement of my group and business page members. Are you?

Think what you want to about Donald Trump, but I will tell you, I used to LOVE his show The Apprentice and his infamous “You’re Fired!” at the end of each episode.

I loved the urgency and intensity of the show and loved to see how people perform under pressure and rise to the occasion! People can do amazing things under pressure and when they feel the urgency to get things done. For me, it gives me sheer adrenaline to work on risky projects and try things I have never done before in my business. I never want to get to a place of complacency or apathy in my business, where I just don’t care to work for it anymore…where I’m content to sit on my butt and watch the world around me. That is not me, that is not in my nature, and it shouldn’t be in yours either!

I get it, some weeks and months are harder than others and sometimes you just don’t have anymore gas in the tank. But let’s get real! Most of the time you’re honestly just being the worst boss ever in your own business! You’re not getting things done, you’re making excuses, you’re piddling around doing things that bring no real value or $$$ into your business. You’re “playing business” and not actually working a business.

Businesses MAKE money, hobbies COST money!

I am going to share with you a little tidbit that I heard many years ago in my direct sales career, so long ago that I can’t actually remember who originally said it, “You many need to fire yourself from the business. Yep, that’s what I said, sometimes you might just need to give yourself the old heave-ho!”. Think about this scenario; if you worked at a company and you had an employee performing the way you are performing in your business right now, would you keep them on the payroll? If yes, awesome! But I would venture to guess that most of you would say NO WAY! You would fire you in a heartbeat — so do it now! Yes, I am giving you permission to completely fire yourself from your own business!

Even for me, there are some months where I just royally screw up my business. I get comfortable in my day to day, I do the mundane business tasks with no sense of urgency and basically just “exist” in the business and perform like a lifeless robot. I need fired, I deserve to be fired! So every now and then… I DO fire myself completely from the business. I fire myself on a Friday for being ineffective and not doing what I know needs to be done for my job to grow my business. Then I will spend the weekend thinking about what I know needs to be done and coming up with a plan to make that happen. Then I rehire myself on Monday morning to get things done right.

How are things going in your business? Do you need to go all “Donald Trump” on your own butt and give yourself a pink slip? If you’re not working your business with urgency & intensity, if you are not leaping out of bed each morning because you are so excited about what you are doing and who you’re helping, you should be fired!

My favorite plan of action to REBOOT:

2 days: Make a list of all the things you need to get done in the next two days. These are #1 priority. And this list needs refreshed often.

2 weeks: Make a list of all the things that need done in the next two weeks. And refresh this list every couple of weeks.

2 months: Make a list of all the things that need done in the next two months. This is where your quarterly planning comes in; upcoming holidays, incentives, sales, etc.

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Complacency & apathy will be the death of your business, do not allow it to come to that.

Deep down, regardless of what you portray to others or make yourself look like on social media, you know if you’ve been slacking in your business. If you’re doing enough to just get by and hoping the “boss” doesn’t notice…you need to get a grip! Since you’re the boss…you’re just cheating yourself and your family out of success. So take a page out of Donald Trump’s show, maybe it’s time to say “YOU’RE FIRED“! Wipe the slate clean, get your thoughts and plans together and then rehire yourself to rock your biz!

Here’s the truth… ya’ll are just making this business too hard!

Get out of your own way, stop “thinking” about working your business and actually get out there and work it! Many of you spend more time thinking about working than actually doing anything constructive for your business and it needs to STOP!

I am going to give you my super simple “Power of 3” routine that you can use every day, with actionables that can actually move your business in a positive and profitable direction.

Now let’s break down what each of these looks like:

Make 3 new connections daily – in order to grow your business you have to meet new people, you can’t do this business without people! Right? So how are you meeting new people every day?

Invite 3 people to look at my product/biz opportunity/booking options/ fundraisers, etc – how are you getting yourself in front of people and when you do get in front of them, what are you doing that will grow the business? Are you prepared when you do get an opportunity for people to look at what you have to offer? Do you have catalog, host packets, recruiting packets, video links, etc prepped and ready to go at a moment’s notice?

Follow up with 3 people – this should go without saying but are you actively following up on the leads you are collecting? Or maybe we should actually start with are you actively collecting leads for your business? What tools do you need to be able to do effective follow up. If you are not doing your follow up communications/calls, you are leaving serious cash on the table.

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Do 3 random acts of kindness or appreciation – let me say this as kindly as possible, this business is not about you! And the sooner you come to realize that, the sooner you will start to see tremendous success. This business is about growing people and empowering them to be who they were created to be. It is not about you, it is about them. If you do not like people, you are in the wrong business, my friend. We are a people business and we need to learn to care more about our fellow people. We need to be kind at all times, I think sometimes we forget the sharpness of our keyboard swords. Speak to people like the humans they are, appreciate people for good work or things you recognize in them. I promise if you take the spotlight off of you and consciously start focusing on others, you will see rewards.

Do 30 minutes of personal development (video, book, audios, podcasts) – this is an area that so many of you are literally STARVING your businesses in. How are you filling up and learning new things? How are you getting educated? You need a constant flow of good business building information coming into you, whether it be from reading or one of my personal faves is podcasts. Find a good one that feeds you and listen to it every day for 30 minutes. Throw a load of laundry in and hide in the laundry room with it so you can get your personal development thing ON!

Do 30 minutes of “me” time (exercise, quiet time,etc) – again, you cannot pour from an empty cup, you need to get refilled and sometimes that refill comes from making yourself a priority verses an afterthought. Take 30 minutes a day and you just do you. I personally like a quiet time where I can just silence the world around me for a little and not be while and not be constantly rushing to the next thing. There will always be a next thing, but there is only one of you and you need to take care of you.

Like I always say, keep it simple and do the actionable. Thinking about working and actuallyworking are not the same thing. Get out there and DO SOMETHING with your business every * single * day!

Animoto is my favorite new video site.

Check out how easy it is to create a beautiful video for your Direct Sales business. When you’re done drooling…you can catch some IDEAS on what videos to make below!

Wasn’t that EASY?!

So what kind of videos can you do to promote your business and where can you post them?

Video Types:

One product that is used in many different ways:

Let’s say you have a catch all bin; show all the different ways you can use that one product

Collections:

Take a group of products and show how they all work together. For example; home organization, products for on the go, solution sets, thermal line, gift giving ideas, men’s products…the list goes on and on.

Enrollment Information:

Take all that boring enrollment information and make a FUN video!

Customer Specials:

Here’s a new way to share the customer special for the month. Do one for all the uses for the customer special, and one showing off the patterns/products available in the customer special.

The point is….HAVE FUN and your customers will too. Say goodbye to the boring normalcy you’re used to and kick it up a notch! Your customers will thank you!

Hey friends!

Happy Spring!! Do you have spring fever?? I definitely do!

April is such a beautiful month! It makes me think of rain washing away the winter yuckies, new beginnings, the weather getting warmer here in Ohio, umbrellas, rain boots and Spring Break! If you walk around the Dollar Tree (my fave store), you see lots of bright colors, flowers, kites, seeds,etc – things that make you want to crawl out of your winter cave and do something! Are you ready to do something?

You have to look for ways to set yourself apart from the masses and stand out. Here are some fun April Marketing Ideas to get you excited about Spring too! Easter is April 1st, so that throws a little wrench into Spring marketing, but no worries, we got this!

#1 April Fools Day (4/1)In social media, what makes people laugh makes people share! Using your business, how can you trick your followers into a giggle or two. If you sell kitchen products, maybe you share an awesome free recipe that goes all wonky at the end. People like to do business with people they like! Show off your fun and silly side!

#2 – Easter (4/1)Easter is the perfect time to share a little of the “behind the scenes” of your life in your customer group on Facebook, something more personal, not just business. Why not share a pic of your kiddos egg hunting, family dinner or family photo in your pretty Easter clothes at church. Let people see the other side of you, the personal size, which is great for creating engagement and building relationships. Ask people to show their favorite Easter Egg Hunt photo of the day, later on in the evening!

#3 Change your FB Customer Group cover photo to something more “April-y” themedThis is an easy way to update your group and get a post into your group member’s news feeds. Make sure you are using that prime real estate of the cover photo space as best you can. Make sure you are not always just featuring product, be sure to include your smiling face sometimes!

#4 Update your Facebook Business Page cover photo to something more Spring-likeMake sure you are updating your Facebook Business Page with the season, you definitely don’t want a cover photo featuring Christmas items up when it is April. But I cannot tell you how many times I see this on some of your business pages. Your cover photo is like your storefront window for your business, make sure it is attractive and in-tune with the season.

#5 Bunny BucksRemember Cupid Cash from February? How about some Bunny Bucks for April? Your customers “earn” $1 in Bunny Bucks for every $10 they spend with you in April. The Bunny Bucks is only redeemable with you and only redeemable in April, so it gets you sales this month and potentially next month too. If you want to move some cash and carry products, you could easily change the coupon to where they can only redeem the Bunny Bucks toward something you have cash and carry and then payout the difference. For example, if they have $10 in Bunny Bucks and the item is $31, they give you the $10 in Bunny Bucks and pay the $21 difference. That’s a sale for April AND a sale for May!

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#5 Spring Cleaning SaleApril is the perfect time to do a “spring cleaning” sale with your business and all of you excess products. If you have products sitting around in your office that you are not using, and even old demonstration items that are still in good shape, let’s get them cleaned out! Depending on the rules of your company, you could sell them off auction style in a Facebook event or group. Or maybe just have a photo album in your group with all of your spring cleaning sale items in there and people bid & buy.

#6 Share cute spring recipes, crafts and tips with your followersI just saw the cutest recipe where you can cut apples and use peanut butter to basically make an adorable spring snail snack. People love that kind of thing and cute tips and ideas like that get shared!! This is called “curating content”, go find something cool on a blog and share it!

#7 Create an April Ideas Pinterest Board and share itHead over to Pinterest and create a theme board for April and pin what you love for April (tips, recipes, crafts, DIY, cleaning, etc). Once you have a minimum of 10-15 pins (I am sure you will find far more that you love), share the link to your Pinterest board in your customer group, your FB business page, your personal timeline, your customer newsletter, etc. Share it everywhere! Invite them to follow you while they are over on Pinterest!

#8 Spring-ify Your Vendor BoothWe are heading into vendor booth season again! People completely pre-judge your vendor booth in about 3 seconds. Think about ways you can completely “spring-ify” your table and display to make it attractive to those scanning the room or just passing by. Be sure to use colors that go well together, maybe just 2-3 colors. Keep things simple and clean!

#9 Host a Spring Fling eventDid your company come out with new products recently? Host a Spring Fling theme event, either in person or online. Even if they didn’t come out with anything new lately, it doesn’t matter! Spring-ify the current offerings and get people excited! When Spring hits, people are more likely to get out and do something (aka spring fever), use that to your advantage and host a super fun spring fling event. This would be an awesome place to cash and carry that spring cleaning product you were looking to sell off!

#10 Spring Break StaycationsNot everyone gets to getaway for spring break anymore! Why not share a month of staycation ideas that they can do from home and incorporate your product into the ideas! Moms are desperate for ideas and they will appreciate refuge you can give them when their kiddos have spring fever! Show your products in action and how they can enhance their lives and provide solutions for their problems.

#11 BONUS ROUNDYou need to be thinking about marketing Mother’s Day! It’s right around the corner and you want to make sure people have enough time to order and get their product. So get a list together of some products you can high light as great Mother’s Day gifts. Make some bundles. Dress up some baskets to give them ideas. Don’t waste time on this, get started now!